Our real-world benchmarks reveal that the general performance of the X4 955
BE is more or less equivalent to that of the Q9650 underclocked to Q9550
speeds. The X4 955 BE was noticeably faster during the NOD32 anti-virus test
and when encoding VC-1 video with TMPGEnc. The Q9650 at 2.83 GHz had a slim
margin of victory when archiving files with WinRAR and and thrashed the X4 955
BE when encoding AAC with iTunes. 3DMark was close while PCMark favored the
X4 955 BE by only 4%.

Power consumption was higher than the Intel. While the X4 955 BE
performs at a level similar to its Intel rival, it does so with higher
power draw, between 30W and 51W more during our timed tests. Undervolting cut
this difference by a fair amount, but the Intel setup still had a sizable advantage.

Benchmark Comparison: X4 955 BE vs. Other Phenom
II's

Test

X4 955 BE (3.2 GHz)

X4 810 (2.6 GHz)

X3 720 (2.8 GHz)

Time

Power

Time

Power

Time

Power

Stock

UV*

NOD32

2:27

128W

118W

3:05

109W

2:47

112W

WinRAR

3:05

128W

116W

3:32

104W

3:16

111W

iTunes

4:34

137W

123W

5:38

112W

5:13

118W

TMPGEnc

2:52

167W

149W

3:29

137W

5:08

130W

3DMark2006

3315

3288

3273

PCMark2005

9004

7756

7738

*CPU undervolted from 1.350V to 1.225V. C&Q left
enabled.

Compared to the AM3 processors in AMD's lineup, the X4 955 BE is not surprisingly
the fastest. The X4 810 loses out in most of our timed tests to the X3 720 BE,
a result of the higher clock speed and the fact the majority of our timed tests
are not multithreaded. Our test suite is representative of "general"
use; most applications still don't take advantage of the extra
cores.

Benchmark Power Consumption (Watt-hours)

Test

Q9650

X4 955 BE 3.2 GHz

X4 810 2.6 GHz

X3 720 2.8 GHz

3.0 GHz

2.83 GHz

Stock

UV*

NOD32

3.50

4.25

5.23

4.82

5.60

5.20

WinRAR

4.66

4.74

6.58

5.96

6.12

6.04

iTunes

5.11

5.36

10.43

9.36

10.52

10.26

TMPGEnc

6.13

6.32

7.98

7.12

7.95

11.12

*CPU undervolted from 1.350V to 1.225V. C&Q left
enabled.

Multiplying the average system power draw by the amount of time it took to
finish our timed tests gives us a rough approximation of how much energy was
actually used. The X4 955 BE system used more power than the 2.83 GHz Q9650
system, even during the tests it won, and even when the X4 955 BE was undervolted.
For a system that is in moderate to heavy use for lengthy amounts of time, the
number of extra watt-hours will certainly add up. With the increased
power consumption also comes heat  the Zerotherm heatsink we utilized for
both platforms felt much hotter when cooling the X4 955 BE.